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It happens every so often, that a photo still catches me off guard and sends me back into that tailspin of self-criticism.

In fact it just happened this week.

Last Sunday I ran a 10km race here in Vancouver called the Sun Run.  Me and 45, 182 other people take over the downtown and do this race around the city.  Its my 3rd year doing this run and a big part of why I do it isn’t the run itself, but is a running clinic that I take for the 13 weeks before at the community centre near my house.  Its such a lovely community of folks that I get to run with each week and it helps me keep inspired to run big time.  It never feels like anyone at the clinic (or the leaders) make any assumptions why people are there to learn to run and it makes for a body-positive space where there is not that assumption that everyone exercises for reasons of weight loss.

So this past Sunday I ran this race for the 3rd time.  I had hoped to cut down a bit of time, but didn’t at all! Alas, a reason to keep on going to my beloved running clinic (and really, showing up and running 10km is something to be proud of unto itself)!

A few days after the race they send out ‘race photos’ where any image in which your number is captured, they can somehow tell it is you.  So I had an email linking me to 4 or 5 race photos, taken right as you come into the finish line.

And oh my, the just spoke right to my inner critic.

All those old stories came rushing back about  my body. About the size of my thighs, the way my shirt rose up above my hips showing my belly. I felt embarrassed. Even though I truly had nothing to be embarrassed about.

It felt like it overshadowed the fact that I had just run 10km! Oh shame, you sure do have a way of stealing our joy don’t you.

Now, you may have seen this post about running I wrote a while back about how suddenly I found myself feeling comfortable wearing running tights and how it was shrinking body shame that helped me do that.

I’ve been so grateful that the body shame I had around my thighs had stayed away and it felt really beautiful to be able to run without shame running alongside me.

But on this path to seeing ourselves with kindness its not always going to be a love-fest, is it.  There is ebb and flow.

There will be moments where we get swept away by old patterns, old stories, and get to shift ourselves back to our new perception of ourselves.

I’m so grateful that as my own path to self-compassion has moved forward, there are less and less of these moments where my inner critic gets fierce (especially compared to how it felt to have them feel constant) but they still happen when I least expect it.

And these photos brought them all back.

So what do we do when we see photos that bring back old stories and make us choose shame over the new stories these photos tell…

Here are a few of the tricks I try to notice (and depending on the day at least one of them will work to pull me back to centre):

• Notice how the photo was taken.  Was it taken at an angle that I would have never shot a photo at myself?  Am I judging myself through someone elses perspective as they took that picture?
• Grab my camera and take a self-portrait and reclaim that feeling of being in control of my own self-image
• Send the woman in the picture love.  In this case, she was probably a few meters away from the finish line, SO ready to stop and walk after almost 10km of running.  So I want to send her love and thank her for showing up for herself in her running journey and that I’m proud of her for crossing that finish line (and rockin’ running tights as a plus size woman).
• Putting the photo in context!  I was running a frickin’ race!!! Or sometimes I look back at old photos of when I was a postpartum doula and doing endless night shifts.  I just look SO tired.  Yet if I put it in context I can remember what was going on for me and why that is a part of the story of the photo and something I can choose not to criticize.
• Give yourself some time & space from the photo. You just might feel differently about it a few days or weeks later…
• Go on a photo walk!  I always feel so much better after getting outside for a photo walk (its healing, I swear).
• Share it with a trusted friend or group of friends who you know you can ask for positive and supportive feedback from, who you trust can see us with kindness. Let their words soak in. Sometimes hearing someone else share how proud they are of us can help us see ourselves that way through their eyes.

I don’t have the photo to share with you (as it was the kind of thing where you had to buy a copy of the photo) but I bet we all have had an experience of seeing a photo that brings back an old story that we had thought we had already healed.

Let’s remember next time that happens that we can trust the wisdom we learned in healing that part of our relationship to our self-image and that resilience in the ebb and flow is a part of this journey to see ourselves with kindness!